lydianchromaticconcept.com

The main body of the LCC and its practical application, including all 4 published versions of Book 1 with their inserts: the 1959 tan cover; the 1959 light green cover Japanese edition; the 1970‘s white cover, which adds an illustrated River Trip to the 1959 edition, and the currently available Fourth Edition, 2001.

The authorization code is the first word on Page 198 of the Fourth Edition of the LCCTO.

Forum rulesAn open letter from Alice Russell. June 21, 2011, Brookline, Massachusetts.1. DO NOT make insulting, mean spirited remarks about anyone or their work; there are a plethora of sites where you can rant unfettered. If you attack someone personally, your comments will be removed. You can post it, but I'm not paying for it. Go elsewhere, and let those artists who are actually interested in discussion and learning have the floor. 2. There will be NO posting of or links to copyrighted material without permission of the copyright owner. That's the law. And if you respect the work of people who make meaningful contributions, you should have no problem following this policy. 3. I appreciate many of the postings from so many of you. Please don't feel you have to spend your time "defending" the LCC to those who come here with the express purpose of disproving it. George worked for decades to disprove it himself; if you know his music, there's no question that it has gravity. And a final word: George was famous for his refusal to lower his standards in all areas of his life, no matter the cost. He twice refused concerts of his music at Lincoln Center Jazz because of their early position on what was authentically jazz. So save any speculation about the level of him as an artist and a man. The quotes on our websites were not written by George; they were written by critics/writers/scholars/fans over many years. Sincerely, Alice

My name is Mato and I live in Zagreb (Croatia). Last autumn I managed to study the Book, and have become an addict. Naturally many posts on this forum captured my interest since then, and finally I wanted to say thank you to everyone who maintains the forum, and others who help by providing explanations and information.

As I've been studying the Concept, out of curiosity I created another kind of Chart. I'd like to share it here, perhaps someone will find it useful...

About equating functional harmony to LCCOTO - that was not my intention, although it might looks so, and maybe you've correctly detected that my previous education in this area was terribly old fashioned. The last page of my pdf (which was the goal of the excercise) might look as if I wanted to see a certain chord (let's say a Maj7) positioned on various degrees of a single-stationary Lyd Chromatic Scale (for example C LC Scale). But I think about the table the other way around: I imagine the chord to be stationary (for example C Maj7) and the Lyd Ch. Scale to be shifting: C LCS, B LCS, Bb LCS, A LCS... and so on. Maybe I didn't explain or note that well enough in there but I thought that this was compatible with the way GR's Chart A is designed. The little colorful charts in the "Chords" section were not my primary focus, these were created just because it was technically relatively easy to create them after other things were sorted out.

As I'm a beginner in all this, my wish was also to see the Chart rewritten with chord symbols that are used on the backing machine I use for practice - BOSS JS-5 (I'm a total beginner in the area of improvisational music). Also, I wanted to see those chords arranged against all tonal levels and across all 12 degrees. Why did I want this? Well, one day while trying to improvise with my instrument and exploring the use of LCConcept, I realized that even on the Ist degree which is normally regarded as a parent for Major chord familly, at some point minor chords show up (at tonal level 9) and that is not so obvious by glancing at the original Chart-A. Also, I wanted to see in more detail what is going on on those degrees (or Lyd Tonic intervals to be precise) which are a bit neglected in the Chart-A: bII, bIII, IV, bVII.

Maybe these things are not so important, I don't know. But pondering over these things, and also thanks to some of your posts which mentioned the idea of Close-To-Distant diagram and other things, I have a sense that I understand things a bit better now, and also that I better understand that there's a whole bunch of things that I have yet discover - I've got a hundred questions...

ML thanks! I'm chewing this, and it will take some time. I'm also running some numbers and comparing with experiments with the instrument. In the mean time, let me amuse you with some remarks my younger daughter (4.5 y.o.) made a few days ago while I was telling the older one the names of the tones on the piano:

- Dad, that F sounds like someone's got stomachache.- Really? How about this? (I play an A)- Like someone's lost in the wood.- How about this? (Cm7b5)- Hmm, like stone.- How about this? (Am7)- Like someone's asleep

For sake of thought exercise and experiment I decided to limit myself and explore 7 note scales, more precisely scales which contain exactly 7 different notes, and where 2 half-steps in sequence are not allowed ( e.g. B/C/C# is illegal because C can be regarded as a "passing note" in such situation). How many of such scales are there possible in our tempered system?

If I got things correctly there are 72 of such scales possible, and they can be classified into 6 nonoverlaping types (patterns), each containing 12 scales.

I decided then to find their signatures and put them onto "circles of fifths" (close to distant relationship?). So I got 6 circles, of which the first one is of course the circle of Lydian scales, another circle contains all Lyd Diminished scales, the next one Lydian Augmented and so on... Now, I wanted to stack those circles one above the other (which one is above the other is not so important, but it's important which scales form together a column) and rotate them until they "lock" into some "logical" position. What does "logical" mean here? Well, something that sounds (and looks) close-related. For example, thanks to LCCOTO we immediately acknowledge that LD (Lydian Diminished) is related to Lydian scale built on the same Lydian Tonic, so these two circles should be rotated so that F Lyd and F LD get close together (one above the other). But what should be done with LFS (Lyd 7b) and LA (Lyd +5), as they are actually members of the same circle/type/pattern? I played these things on the piano, and so far I feel that LFS is a closer relative of the Lyd than LA. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but so far I decided to rotate this circle so that F LFS gets close to (under) F Lyd, and F LA is then treated as G LFS and falls under the G Lyd...

So, I went on with this, and if anyone cares to take a look at the final result, it is here:

It was interesting to see all those crazy signatures... Maybe they are something totally normal to all of you more familiar with jazz and modern music, but I've certainly never seen them yet printed this way (although it could well be that I've heard music relying on such patterns, but my solfegge abilities are not on the level which would have made me aware of that).It was for me interesting then to see this L+2 scale, which sounds to me also very nice, but I don't remember seeing it mentioned in the book, though I know it's used (for example Eb L+2 is used in Klezmer music and they call it Freylekhs).

I apologize if I'm doing something stupid, you can see that I'm quite a beginner - I would be interested to hear/read any critique if you see some flaws in my approach. But all this exploration (inspired by the book) is so interesting and enjoyable... I should probably stop theorizing now, and go back to my instrument more...

"With regards to the LCC, it only has a few scales, used in uncommon ways.It's intervals that propagate melody, not scales. Scales are merely depositories for intervals."ML that's nice.When I studied with George and Ben they talked about creating your own 'official' scales. All that is necessary is a Lydian Tonic and an understanding of the Tonal Order.

Dear ML,it took me more than a month to decipher that. Maybe I'm slow but I think I am starting to grasp. Thank you so much. I managed to snatch the 1st edition of the book from ebay some weeks ago, hopefully it will shed a bit more light for me on all this when it arrives. I'm having a lot of fun anyway...All the best,m

Again, many thanks for encouragement and your posts ML!The 1st ed arrived, and I've studied the main part carefully. I'm so happy, the picture has become much clearer. I found the 1st ed much easier to go through than the 4th ed. Just as you've mentioned somewhere on the forum, it's actually hinted in the subtitle - 1st ed: "for improvisation", therefore for the player/musician, 4th ed: "the science", therefore more for "mathematicians" among us I'm interested to study your Sonic Migration invention next, but right now I want to practice some more the core thing.All the best,m